It's Time to Ditch Daylight Savings

Daylight savings time has always seemingly been a rather pointless event on the calendar. Set your clock back an hour in the fall and move it forward one in the spring. According to Time magazine, the concept was originally implemented in Germany during World War I as a means to conserve power. The policy was then adopted nationwide in the United States in 1918 with the same goal of reducing power consumption.

Even during the implementation of the policy in the early 20th century, it faced stiff opposition from Hollywood due to concerns that, with earlier sunsets, people would not go to movies in the dark. Time magazine also reported that some farmers argued the idea of daylight saving, believing that it would interrupt their schedules.

In more modern times, daylight savings has become almost ironically unpopular. Not many people are too fond of losing an hour of sleep in the spring. There is even bipartisan legislation that has been introduced to the U.S. Senate to end the process of moving the clock forward and backward twice a year, and to make daylight savings time the permanent time marked on our clocks. Some states like Arizona and Hawaii already don’t participate in these biyearly time changes and it’s time the rest of the country joins them.

Of course when discussing the issues involved with daylight savings you can start with the less important issues like the fact that it can be rather annoying and inconvenient, which of course is a valid complaint. However, there are deeper issues to be found within daylight savings, such as the mental detriment these time changes can cause. With the abrupt shifting of time in the spring, mornings are often very dark and students will be arriving at school before the sun even rises, and in the winter, the sunset becomes considerably earlier in the day.

These harsh and dramatic changes in the daily cycle and timing of the sun can actually have noticeable effects on mental health. According to the University of Michigan, when the clock moves forward and the amount of sunlight we receive in the morning changes, our internal clock, or circadian rhythm, becomes disrupted. This can make waking up harder, and increased sunlight in the evening can make falling asleep harder. When we lose sleep, our mental health declines rapidly.

It may seem silly, but standardizing time throughout the nation and ending daylight savings time should be seriously considered by American lawmakers. Not only is the idea of this time period useless in modern society, it has actually proven to be detrimental on several levels, which is why we should ditch daylight savings.